- Coinciding with World Health Day and World Health Week, the ‘BioMed & Tech Talks’ will be held in Granada from April 8 to 11, 2024 to give visibility to advances in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
- Amaya Jiménez Moreno, researcher in Artificial Intelligence for eXtended Reality at Nokia Spain, XR Lab, will address the development of XR eXtended Reality technologies that enable immersive communication experiences applied to wellness, therapy, remote monitoring and vocational training use cases.
- Attendees at ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’, which will be held over two days at the Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio de Granada, will enjoy various recreations with demos on immersive therapy and immersive communications.
The development of eXtended Reality XR technologies that enable immersive communication experiences applied to wellness use cases, therapy, remote monitoring and vocational training will be one of the topics to be discussed at the first edition of ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, to be held from April 8 to 11 at the Granada Health Technology Park, coinciding with the World Health Day and Week.
Amaya Jiménez Moreno, researcher in Artificial Intelligence for eXtended Reality at Nokia Spain, XR Lab, will be in charge of presenting the research initiatives being developed from Nokia Spain, XR Lab’s headquarters in Madrid at this event, which is set to become a reference in biomedicine and biotechnology in Southern Europe. Specifically, a project that aims to apply these technologies to people with intellectual disabilities and other vulnerable psychosocial situations as a fundamental step towards the development of a fully inclusive Metaverse.
BioMed&Tech Talks’, organized by Medina Media Events, is supported by the Progreso y Salud Foundation (FPS), of the Ministry of Health and Consumer Affairs of the Andalusian Regional Government, and representatives of the World Health Organization (WHO), Farmaindustria, the Andalusian Health Service (SAS), the Spanish Association of Biocompanies (ASEBIO) and health communicators associations, such as ANIS, AEC2 and Comunicabiotec, have already confirmed their participation.
Dr. Amaya Jiménez Moreno has co-authored more than 30 papers in international journals and conferences on video coding, image processing and Artificial Intelligence. In 2106 she received her PhD in Telecommunication Engineering from Universidad Carlos III de Madrid and throughout her career she has been part of research teams at the video coding company V-Nova, in London, and at the Biocomputing Unit of the National Biotechnology Center of CSIC, in Madrid. He has also taught at the Carlos III University and the San Pablo CEU University in Madrid, with more than 500 hours of teaching.
Immersive therapy for the treatment of phobias
Attendees at ‘BioMed&Tech Talks’, which will be held over two days at the Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio in Granada, will be able to witness in person the revolutionary projects being worked on by Nokia Spain, XR Lab, which will install two demos on immersive therapy and immersive communications.
The first of these will be the recreation of an immersive behavioral therapy for the treatment of phobias in individuals with intellectual disabilities. In this way, “the combination of traditional behavioral therapy with Extended Reality (XR) and physiological data facilitates the adaptation of the treatment of phobias to people with intellectual disabilities,” says Dr. Amaya Jiménez Moreno.
Employing principles of systematic desensitization, the proposed tool creates immersive virtual environments tailored to stair-related phobias. Therapists closely follow and guide the process, using real-time data from the head-mounted display (HMD) and an Empatica E4 wristband to assess emotional and anxiety states. “The development of the tool has been designed following the therapists’ guidelines to ensure a valid transition from classical to immersive therapies,” the researcher emphasizes about this promising treatment of phobias with individuals in vulnerable psychosocial situations.
Immersive communications with ‘Owl’ in the healthcare world
One of the most advanced technologies developed by Nokia Spain is the ‘Owl’, an “immersive communication application that uses telepresence to provide an experience much closer to a real meeting with human contact than any existing videoconferencing product,” says Dr. Amaya Jiménez Moreno.
This is a revolutionary concept of immersive communication that Nokia Spain has already implemented in other sectors and now incorporates the health sector. Basically, what ‘The Owl’ or ‘The Owl’ allows is that a person who is miles away can teleport to our side. To achieve this goal, a combination of immersive audiovisual technologies (mixed reality, VR, AR, 360 video), video transmission, and knowledge of the underlying network is used.
The fields of application for this communication concept are manifold. In the case of the healthcare sector it can be used for enriched remote training, allowing more interaction with other students and teachers, and physical and digital elements; or complex training spaces, such as an operating room, drastically reducing logistics and cost. Similarly, for conducting therapy and/or monitoring to achieve a closer and more immersive experience, knowing more details between interlocutors, e.g. direct face-to-face contact, full view of the person and room, etc.
Innovative format for a high-level event
The Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio, located in the Granada Health Technology Park, will host the first edition of ‘BioMed &Tech Talks’: Your appointment with research and innovation, a new independent, transversal, international and multidisciplinary event that from April 8 to 11, 2024, coinciding with the World Health Day and Week, will give visibility to innovative projects in BioMedicine and BioTechnology.
The agenda will include two face-to-face sessions (Monday 8 and Tuesday 9 April) and two virtual sessions (10 and 11). This format allows speakers and experts who cannot travel to Granada to share their progress and messages with the entire community, which raises the academic level of this event to the highest level.
All BM&TTalks presentations can be followed through ‘The Observatory’, the digital platform of Medina Media Events, where all interventions will also be available 24/365 for on-demand consumption, like Netflix, but free of charge.
The first edition of ‘BioMed & Tech Talks’ is organized by Medina Media Events in collaboration with the Fundación Progreso y Salud of the Consejería de Salud y Consumo de la Junta de Andalucía and is supported by GSK, Nokia, El Observatorio and the Hospital Clínico Universitario San Cecilio. Also collaborating are Andalucía TRADE, ASEBIO, Wellness Forum and Granada Convention Bureau, among others.